Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World

  • Science & Medicine

Book thumbnail image

The Story of Black Mesa

By Theda Perdue and Michael D. Green
After World War II, economic development was at the top of the agendas of virtually every reservation. Unemployment was almost universal, family incomes were virtually nil, and the tribes had no income beyond government appropriations to the BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs]. Some reservations did have natural resources. Some tribes own important timber reserves, but mineral resources attracted most postwar attention. Thirty percent of the low-sulfur coal west of the Mississippi is on Indian land, as is 5 to 10 percent of the oil and gas and some 50 to 80 percent of the uranium. Congress enacted legislation in 1918 and again in 1938 to authorize the secretary of the interior to negotiate leases to develop tribal mineral resources.

Read More
Book thumbnail image

2012: The year that the Higgs boson is discovered

By Jim Baggott
The new year is a time for bold and often foolhardy predictions. Certainly, most of us will take the prophesy of impending doom on 21 December, 2012 with a large pinch of salt. This date may represent the end of a 5,125-year cycle in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, but it doesn’t necessarily signal the end of all things (not even in Mayan history, contrary to popular belief). I think that when the time comes, we can plan for Christmas 2012 with a reasonably clear conscience. But, despite the obvious pitfalls, I am prepared to stick my neck out and make a prediction. I predict that this will be the year that the Higgs boson is discovered.

Read More
Book thumbnail image

Giving up smoking? Put your mind to it

By Cecilia Westbrook
Everybody knows that smoking is bad for you. Yet quitting smoking is a challenging endeavour – insurmountable for some. Even smokers who get the best help available still have a 50% chance of relapsing. Clearly, the more options we have to help with cessation, the better. Recent research suggests that meditation and mindfulness may be beneficial for smokers looking to extinguish the habit.

Read More
Book thumbnail image

Madam C. J. Walker born

This Day in World History
Madam C. J. Walker tells her own story: “I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. From there I was promoted to the washtub. From there I was promoted to the cook kitchen. And from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparation… I have built my own factory on my own ground.”

Read More
Book thumbnail image

Curies discover radium

This Day in World History
Working in an old shed on a sample of pitchblende, or uraninite, using chemical processes to separate different elements, the wife and husband team finally reached their breakthrough. They isolated a new element more radioactive than the uranium studied two years before and called it radium.

Read More
Book thumbnail image

Born to be a sacred midwife

Born with the destiny of becoming a Mayan sacred midwife, Chona Perez has carried on centuries-old traditional Indigenous American birth and healing practices over her 85 years. At the same time, Chona developed new approaches to the care of pregnancy, newborns, and mothers based on her own experience and ideas. In this way, Chona has contributed to both the cultural continuities and cultural changes of her town over the decades.

Read More
Book thumbnail image

Ageing, diabetes, and the risk of falling

Whilst browsing the Oxford journal Age and Ageing last week, I came across a paper focusing on diabetes in the elderly. Interestingly, it noted that men and women with diabetes aged 65 or over are one and half times more likely to have recurrent falls than people in the same age bracket without diabetes. Having two sets of  grandparents in their seventies, one pair with diabetes and one without, I wanted to know about this correlation between diabetes and falling, and how it might apply to them. Here, I speak with Ms. Evelien Pijpers, author of this paper, to learn more.

Read More
Book thumbnail image

Does my dog see in color?

By Ivan R. Schwab
Well, yes, sort of. Dogs see colors, but their span of color vision closely resembles the array of colors seen by “color blind” males. About 8%, or 1 out of 12 males (humans) and about 1 out of 200 females are “color blind.” We use that term to describe individuals that are color deficient, but they are not truly color blind.

Read More
Book thumbnail image

Why the climate negotiations matter

By Matthew J. Hoffmann
Though any breakthrough in negotiations is unlikely, the multilateral meetings remain a pivotal space for the growth of innovative approaches to the coming climate crisis.

Read More
Book thumbnail image

Extractive industries, intellectual property, and the health of indigenous peoples

By William H. Wiist
Because the corporate goal is to obtain the highest profit possible, not social welfare, public health or environmental sustainability, business interests often give little or no consideration to the effects of corporate practices on indigenous peoples. Thus, the estimated 257 to 370 million indigenous peoples in about 5,000 communities in 70 countries, speaking 5,000 of the 6,000 existing languages, often experience severe detrimental consequences from commercial activity.

Read More
Book thumbnail image

Edison demonstrates the phonograph

This Day in World History
While he cranked the handle on the device, inventor Thomas Edison watched the faces of the editors from the journal Scientific American. He was in the magazine’s offices to demonstrate one of his newest inventions. As he cranked, indentations made on a tinfoil cylinder sent signals to a diaphragm, and the editors heard the machine ask after their health.

Read More
Book thumbnail image

Barnard performs first heart transplant

This Day in World History
For five hours, the thirty-person surgical team worked in an operating room in Cape Town, South Africa. The head surgeon, Dr. Christiaan Barnard, was leading the team into uncharted territory, transplanting the heart of a young woman killed in a car accident into the chest of 55-year-old Louis Washkansky.

Read More
Book thumbnail image

The periodic table: matter matters

By Eric Scerri
As far back as I can remember I have always liked sorting and classifying things. As a boy I was an avid stamp collector. I would sort my stamps into countries, particular sets, then arrange them in order of increasing monetary value shown on the face of the stamp. I would go to great lengths to select the best possible copy of any stamp that I had several versions of. It’s not altogether surprising that I have therefore ended up doing research and writing books on what is perhaps the finest example of a scientific system of classification – the periodic table of the elements.

Read More